All Out--The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens throughout the Ages

by Saundra Mitchell

  “Your train leaves at six, doesn’t it?” She sounded sad now.

  I nodded. “Yeah. That can’t be more than...an hour away?”

  “I can’t believe you’re leaving so soon,” she said. “I can’t believe Betsey Burns was in my town for a few hours and I’m the only one who saw her.”

  “You and the old man we woke up.” I grinned. “It was the best few hours I could’ve asked for. Even if I did lose my shoes.” I thought for a moment. “Do you have a pen?”

  “Uh, sure.” She reached into the pocket of her diner uniform and pulled one out, handing it over to me.

  I grabbed her hand and scribbled as best I could in the dim light. When I gave the pen back to her, she had an address scrawled in blue ink across the back of her hand. “The theater where I’ll be working,” I said. “I meant it what I said about you having time to figure out what you want to do. And if Manhattan is one of the stops on your adventure, come find me.”

  She blinked, and for a second I worried she was crying. She stared at me, still and quiet, for a long moment, before lunging forward and wrapping her arms around my shoulders. I was so startled that I stumbled backward, but after a second, I returned the embrace.

  “Thank you,” she said. Slowly, she stepped backward. “And since your family is all scattered around, if you ever need...if you need a family to come home to, our little town will be glad to oblige.”

  I smiled. “You’ll be my family?”

  “I’ll be your anything,” she said.

  My heart fluttered in a way it hadn’t before. And I was overcome with the urge to do something I’d never wanted to in my life. Something that had always felt too intimate for anyone else. But slowly, nervously, I stepped forward, placed my hands on her cheeks...

  And I kissed the beautiful waitress.

  It was just a quick peck on the lips. I wasn’t ready for anything more and I wasn’t sure I’d ever be. But I hoped Laura knew how huge even that small gesture was for me. How much it meant.

  How much she meant.

  I think she understood, because when I pulled back, her face became warm beneath my fingers, and her cheeks swelled into a smile. I lowered my hands and slid them down her arms until I was able to lace my fingers through hers.

  She rested her forehand against mine. “Your train leaves soon,” she said.

  “I know,” I whispered. “But there’s still time to watch the sunrise.”

  Together, we turned and made our way up the hill at the center of the graveyard.

  And we watched a new day begin.

  * * * * *

  THE END OF THE WORLD

  AS WE KNOW IT

  BY

  SARA FARIZAN

  Massachusetts, 1999

  It’s kind of shitty to think that on the eve of the apocalypse, I’m wasting my last hours watching Carson Daly in Times Square awkwardly ask burgeoning pop star Mandy Moore the most banal of questions. The news has everyone in hysterics, wondering if all computer systems will freak out and civilized society will be done for. The stock market will free-fall, people will riot, people’s tomatoes wouldn’t make it from California to their local supermarkets, some speculated aliens would find us. Chaos was to take place at midnight, but Carson was asking Mandy if she could kiss any guy at midnight who would it be? 1) How is that any of your business, Carson? She’s a teenage girl and you’re a grown man. 2) She answered Ryan Philippe instead of telling him that maybe she’d like to be asked more pressing questions like “Do you think all major computer systems will shut down at midnight?” and “Is there potential for a more utopian future in the new millennium?” I guess that’s not really the vibe they’re going for on MTV. Being a girl is stupid. People only want to know whom you want to kiss and nothing else.

  So what kind of girl am I if I have no one to kiss on the brink of the world’s demise? Does that make one...useless? Well, at least after midnight, I will be rid of the patriarchy forever should the computers freak out, or whatever calamity is supposed to happen. My parents didn’t seem too worried about Y2K, but my mom did stock up on an awful lot of canned soup on our last shopping trip. My dad took out a bunch of cash from the bank before Christmas. Just in case, I guess.

  My folks asked me if I was going out, which was a very generous assumption on their end. There was a party at John Findlay’s house, but I didn’t see the point. It was senior year, and the rules of cliques no longer applied so it wouldn’t be weird for me to go to a cool-kid party, but I couldn’t stand the idea of spending what could be the beginning of the end around people who didn’t really know me. Most of the people there still couldn’t pronounce my name after four years at Milton High School. Ezgi Olmez does not always roll off the tongue in the outer suburbs of Boston, but my Turkish parents obviously didn’t give much thought to that. I do love that about them though. They are unapologetically foreign.

  “Askim,” I hear my mother yell from downstairs. “Do you want to come join us downstairs? Or do you want to be by yourself and have a sad, lonely year?” Mom has never been a fan of beating around the bush. I pad downstairs and find my parents both wearing paper top hats with Happy New Year written on them and an assortment of snacks with a bottle of sparkling cider on the table.

  “Ezgi! You made it to our party!” my dad said enthusiastically as he stands up to give me a big hug. I saw him just two hours ago, but he’s always been a big fan of New Year’s Eve. He’s really into new beginnings and renewal, which is maybe the reason why he came to the States twenty-five years ago. Dad squeezes my face so that I have chipmunk cheeks. “Remember when she was a little baby and she had the roundest face? It’s a shame time goes by so fast.” He kisses my cheek before he releases me. “I suppose I like you now, too.”

  Mom pats the sofa cushion for me to sit down between her and Dad. They have it on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve in lieu of the MTV version of practically the same program I was watching upstairs.

  “I would never go to Times Square on New Year’s Eve. Aren’t they freezing?” Mom wonders aloud as I pop a chip in my mouth.

  “Let’s go next year! We can visit Ezgi at school and she can show us around,” Dad said eagerly. His confidence in my acceptance to NYU made me a little uneasy. If the computers do freak out, I won’t have to worry about my future anymore.

  “You go by yourself! I’m staying indoors where it is warm and I don’t have to worry about where to use the restroom,” Mom said. “Besides, Ezgi will be busy with all her new friends.”

  This is very wishful thinking on Mom’s part. I have friends, maybe five or so that I hang with, but we’re kind of friends out of necessity. Everybody’s nice, but we don’t have a whole lot in common except for the fact that we don’t have anyone else to chill with. We are discards of other social circles. I used to be part of a duo, but she dropped me last year. It was weird, being best friends with someone since kindergarten and then she blew me by avoiding me at every turn.

  My parents loved Katie, but they learned to stop asking about why they hadn’t seen her around. I think it made my folks sadder than it made me. Mostly I was confused, a little angry and then too proud to wonder why she dropped me like a 1-800-COLLECT call on a city payphone by a bus terminal.

  “You can come visit me on New Year’s Eve, Dad. But I will drop you off at Times Square and come get you when all the confetti is being cleaned up,” I said. Times Square and the electronic spectacle of advertisements didn’t really look like my scene. I saw myself more in the West Village, though I didn’t feel ready to let my parents know that yet, if ever. Another thing I won’t have to worry about post Y2K. Thanks, binary code gone awry!

  “Do you have any resolutions for the New Year, canim?” Dad asked me.

  To figure out who I am and what I want my life to be like.

  “No. Can’t think of anything,” I said.

  “Can
’t think of anything? At all?” Mom asks in a disappointed tone of voice.

  “That makes sense,” Dad said. “Ezgi’s perfect! She doesn’t need to change anything in the next year.” He’s mushy. I love his guts.

  “This is the year I stop smoking,” Mom declared. My dad and I just looked at each other before we laughed. “I will! It’s a special year and I am determined. Starting tomorrow.”

  The doorbell rings, which startles all of us.

  “Did you invite anyone over?” Dad asks me as I get up to answer the front door.

  “Check the window before you open the door. It might be Y2K looters,” Mom said kind of seriously. If she’s this paranoid as a smoker, I can’t imagine how nervous she’ll be when she tries to quit.

  I open the door and find a rosy-cheeked Katie Brewer, her long red hair tucked behind her ears, a crop-top shirt showing off her midriff underneath her puffy unzipped Tommy Hilfiger coat.

  “Hi,” I utter as though it’s totally normal for her to be here even though she hasn’t been in my life for over a year.

  “Hi, Ez.” Her eyes are heavy and she’s swaying a little. She’s been drinking and should be shivering in the snow, but seems to be warm enough from the buzz she’s got going.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask, not maliciously, but out of genuine curiosity.

  “We made a promise. Remember?”

  Did we? I don’t remember. Then she does the Macarena. I remembered Zach Bratman’s birthday party and his parents insisting on supervising the whole night. His parents tried to get us all to do the Macarena, but Katie and I weren’t going for it. She asked me then if I’d ever do the Macarena, and I said only if the fate of the planet depended upon it and the world was going to end.

  “Right,” I said, amazed that so much time had passed since then.

  “Are you going to let me in?” Katie asked with a small laugh, but it didn’t quite mask the tremor in her voice. I moved aside and opened the door wider for her.

  “Wouldn’t you rather be at your boyfriend’s party?” I asked her.

  “It was kind of a letdown. Besides, I’ve always preferred your parents to the people at John’s shindigs.” She shrugged off her coat, hanging it on our coat rack.

  “You’ve been drinking,” I said, matter of fact.

  “What? I have? No!” She’s grinning at me.

  “My parents are going to know,” I hiss.

  “I’ll keep a respectful distance,” she said, holding up her hands. Has she met my parents? They never did respectful distance with Katie. They hugged her like they hugged me. I lead her into the living room, and as soon as my parents see her, they rush her like she’s a quarterback about to be sacked.

  “Katie! Happy New Year!” my dad said while hugging her. When he finished, Mom tags in and holds Katie close.

  “Katie, where have you been? We’ve missed you. How did you get so tall?” Mom says before she backs away from Katie, and her happy expression turns to a concerned one. I can tell Mom was close enough to smell the booze on her.

  “It’s nice to see you, Mr. and Mrs. Olmez. Really nice,” Katie said a little sadly.

  “Would you like to join our party?” Dad put his paper hat on Katie’s head.

  “I think Katie and I are going to hang out upstairs for a while,” I said, hoping I could sober Katie up a little more as I took her hand and lead her upstairs.

  “Okay! Let us know if you need anything,” Dad said while Mom looked at us in concern. As I lead Katie up, I overheard my mom say to my dad in Turkish that she was worried about how skinny Katie was.

  I locked my bedroom door as Katie plopped herself onto the edge of my bed and turned on my dinky TV.

  “I feel like she can totally do better,” Katie said pointing at Jennifer Love Hewitt and Carson Daly as they exchanged niceties.

  “Are you okay?” I ask, because it is really weird to have her back in my room again.

  “Why does everyone keep asking me that lately?” she said, exasperated, as she took off her paper hat. “Are you going to stand and judge me all night or are you going to sit and watch TV with me?”

  I compromise and sit on the floor cross-legged instead of sitting next to her on my bed. She can’t just show up at my door and pretend like everything is cool and she didn’t ditch me to hang out with jocks.

  “Just don’t ask me to do the Macarena,” I said coldly.

  “Fair enough,” she said, leaning on her side and acting like it was her bed. “Anybody good performing tonight?”

  “That depends on one’s definition of good.” Katie and I always had major differences of opinion when it came to everything, but especially music. “I’m just waiting to see Aaliyah. She’s not performing, but the commercial said she’d be on,” I said.

  “You have such a crush on her,” Katie said.

  “I do not!”

  “No?” Katie said as she pointed to my Aaliyah poster by my vanity mirror.

  “I just think she’s really cool. Besides, I have posters of dudes up,” I said, looking around my room for evidence.

  “You mean that tiny cutout of Leo from Romeo + Juliet?”

  “Whatever. Shut up.”

  We’re quiet for a few moments and there is suddenly discomfort in our familiarity with one another.

  “Do you think the Y2K thing is going to mess everything up?” Katie asked.

  “I don’t know. I think everything’s already messed up after Columbine. Like, what kind of world do we live in if you can get shot up in your high school?”

  “That was horrible. But I think it’s a one-time thing. People won’t stand for that kind of tragedy to keep happening.”

  “I hope so. I was freaked out all week.” I wanted to add, “but you wouldn’t know that because we don’t talk anymore” but thought that would be petty.

  “Matthew Shepard. That messed me up,” Katie whispered. I took her in and how she was picking at my comforter. Matthew Shepard’s murder made me throw up when I saw it on the news.

  The way they killed him.

  The reason they killed him.

  It terrified me.

  Come to think of it, that was around the time Katie started avoiding me.

  I couldn’t look at her anymore and I didn’t understand why so I focused on the TV.

  * * *

  “I hope Everlast got paid a lot to rap with that guy,” I said, recapping the horrible junk music from Limp Bizkit.

  “I kind of like their songs,” Katie said with a shrug. We were now sitting next to each other on the carpet.

  “You would. Let me guess what you’re listening to these days... Orgy, Placebo, Korn and maybe some Britney Spears. How’d I do?”

  By Katie’s annoyed expression, I assumed I had some spot-on guesses.

  “I bet you’re listening to Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey and TLC. Just stuck on old favorites,” Katie said, nudging my shoulder with hers.

  “I think you’re the one stuck on old favorites,” I said. “What are you doing here, Katie?”

  She cleared her throat and didn’t make eye contact with me.

  “At the party, everyone was talking about the end of the world,” Katie said as the crowd on the screen counted down from ten. “I thought, if it is true, if the world is going to get screwed up beyond measure...you’re really the only person I’d want to say goodbye to.”

  This time she didn’t avert her eyes to the television. Neither did I.

  Three.

  She leaned in.

  Two.

  She took a breath.

  One.

  Her lips touched mine.

  I didn’t pull myself away.

  After she lightly tugged my hair, after I brushed her lower lip with mine, after she nibbled my ear and we got lost in each other, she backed aw
ay from me.

  “Interesting,” Katie said, looking around my room.

  “What?” I asked, worried that maybe she was just drunk and didn’t mean to kiss me. I was confused, and a little scared by how turned on I was by my former best friend. What the hell was happening? Who did she think she was just lunging in like that...and, wow, could she kiss! I suddenly felt a little jealous that her kissing prowess was being wasted on John.

  “The world didn’t end,” she said, nodding to the TV as No Doubt kept playing. She turned back to me and smiled before she leaned in again. This time, I backed away.

  “Hang on, hang on a sec,” I said putting my hands on her shoulders. “What are we doing?”

  “I believe it is called making out,” Katie said.

  “No, I mean, I like it. I just didn’t think I’d like it,” I said, trying to process what had happened.

  “Because I’m a girl?”

  “Because you’re...you. I never thought of you in that way.”

  “Gee, you sure do know how to make a lady feel special,” Katie said, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “No! God, I mean, you were my best friend, and then you ignored me completely and now we’re kissing,” I said, rubbing my temples with my fingers. “What does it mean? What about John? Why did you treat me like a leper but then decide your version of an apology is to stick your tongue down my throat?”

  “You always do this. You always try and make magical things logical.” Katie rolled her eyes.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “You were at my house, eating chicken nuggets as many seven year olds are prone to when you lost your first tooth. You were crying, worried you were never going to have a front tooth again. My mom tried to calm you down and explained the tooth fairy. You weren’t buying it. You kept asking all these questions about how it would be possible for her to make it around the world to every lost tooth. You asked so many questions, that I started to not buy the tooth fairy thing either and, damn it, I really wanted to! It sounded fun.”